153. Note. _Troja fuit._ ‘Et Thebae steterunt, altaque Troja fuit.’
Propertius, _Elegies_, II. 8.
154. _Like Mr. Cobbett’s ‘Gold against Paper.’_ The first of Cobbett’s
articles on ‘Paper against Gold’ appeared in the _Political
Register_ on Sept. 1, 1810. The articles were afterwards
collected and published in separate form.
_Lord Bacon’s axiom._ _Advancement of Learning_, Book I. V. 1.
‘_But of this be sure_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 158–9.
155. ‘_Ambling and lisping_,’ _etc._ ‘You jig, you amble, and you lisp,
and nickname God’s creatures.’ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 1.
156. _Edgar’s exaggerations to Gloster._ _King Lear_, Act IV. Scene 6.
_Mr. Montgomery._ James Montgomery (1771–1854), while editor of
_The Sheffield Iris_, suffered two terms of imprisonment
(1795–1796), but not in connection with the Duke of Richmond’s
_Letter on Reform_, which was originally published in 1783.
_Spain, as Ferdinand_, _etc._ In March 1820, in consequence of a
revolution in Spain, Ferdinand VII. was forced to accept the
constitution of 1812, and the suppression of the Inquisition,
but in October of the same year, as the result of French
intervention, absolutism was restored. This essay would appear
to have been written between these two dates.
ESSAY XVI. ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION
‘_Thin partitions_,’ _etc._ Dryden, _Absalom and Achitophel_, Part
I. 164.
157. ‘_A feather will turn_,’ _etc._ Cf. ‘The weight of a hair will
turn the scales between their avoirdupois’ (_Henry IV._, Part
II. Act II. Scene 4), and ‘Go to, sir; you weigh equally; a
feather will turn the scale’ (_Measure for Measure_, Act IV.
Scene 2).
‘_Great Vulgar and the Small._’ Cowley, Horace, _Odes_, III. 1.
159. ‘_Have eyes and see them._’ ‘Eyes have they, but they see not.’
_Psalms_, CXV. 5.
‘_Lovers of low company._’ ‘Kings are naturally lovers of low
company.’ Burke, _Speech on Economical Reform_ (_Works_, Bohn,
II. 106).
160. ‘_I like it_,’ _etc._ The reference seems to be to _Evelina_,
Letter XXI.
_Janus Weathercock, Esq._ One of the pseudonyms of the notorious
poisoner Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794–1852). He and
Hazlitt were in 1820 fellow-contributors to _The London
Magazine_. For the matters referred to in this paragraph of the
text, see Hazlitt’s Dramatic Essays, especially the essay
reprinted from _The London Magazine_ for July 1820. For an
account of Wainewright see the introduction to Mr. W. C.
Hazlitt’s selection of Wainewright’s _Essays and Criticisms_
(1880). The article to which Hazlitt replies had appeared in
_The London Magazine_ for June 1820 (vol. I. p. 630) under the
title of ‘Janus’s Jumble.’
Note. ‘_Dip it in the ocean_,’ _etc._ _The Sentimental Journey_,
The Wig, Paris.
161. _Milaine ‘with the foot of fire.’_ See Hazlitt’s Dramatic Essays.
‘_Swallows total grist_,’ _etc._ Cowper, _The Task_, VI. 108.
_Emery’s Yorkshireman._ The character of Tyke in Morton’s _The
School for Reform_. Cf. Hazlitt’s Dramatic Essays.
162. ‘_A stamp_,’ _etc._ ‘A stamp exclusive and professional.’ Leigh
Hunt, _The Story of Rimini_, III. 32.
‘_Gabble most brutishly._’
‘But wouldst gabble like
A thing most brutish.’
_The Tempest_, Act I. Scene 2.
162. ‘_His speech bewrayeth him._’ _St. Matthew_, xxvi. 73.
_Servum pecus imitatorum._ ‘O imitatores, servum pecus.’ Horace,
_Epistles_, I. xix. 19.
‘_An author_,’ _etc._ Young, _Epistles to Mr. Pope_, II. 15–16.
163. _Odi profanum vulgus_, _etc._ Horace, _Odes_, III. 1.
_Vice by losing_, _etc._ Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution in
France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne), II. 89.
164. ‘_Making mops and mows._’ _The Tempest_, Act IV. Scene 1.
‘_Go thou_,’ _etc._ _St. Luke_, x. 37.
_Eastward Hoe._ Published in 1605. The authors were sent to prison
for this comedy.
165. _Millamant._ In Congreve’s _The Way of the World_ (1700).
‘_Worn in their newest gloss._’ _Macbeth_, Act I. Scene 7.
‘_And all was conscience_,’ _etc._ Chaucer, _Canterbury Tales_,
Prologue, 150.
166. Note. _New Way to pay Old Debts._ Massinger’s famous Comedy,
published in 1633.
167. _Hogarth’s_ Merveilleuses _in Bedlam_. Hazlitt refers to the
eighth plate of _The Rake’s Progress_. Cf. his Essay ‘On the
Works of Hogarth,’ vol. viii. p. 143.
_Cuckold’s Point._ Not on the coast of Essex, but near Deptford in
Kent. It was the meeting-place for the riotous mobs who
afterwards marched to the Horn-Fair at Charlton on Oct. 18. See
Brand’s _Popular Antiquities_, II. 194.
168. _The proverbs about the mistress’s eye._ ‘The mistress’s eye feeds
the capon.’ ‘The master’s eye makes the horse fat.’ See Mr. W.
C. Hazlitt’s _English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases_ (1882).
ESSAY XVII. ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN
‘Table Talk, No. XI.,’ from _The London Magazine_, August 1821
(vol. IV. p. 176).
‘_And blind Orion_,’ _etc._ Keats, _Endymion_, II. 198.
‘_A hunter of shadows_,’ _etc._ Cf.
‘The huge Orion, of portentous size,
Swift through the gloom a giant-hunter flies.’
Pope, Homer’s _Odyssey_, XI. 703–4.
_And having lost an eye_, _etc._ For offering violence to Merope,
Orion was blinded by her father Oenopion with the assistance of
Dionysus.
‘_Grey dawn_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, VII. 373–4.
169. ‘_Shadowy sets off._’
‘Full-orbed the moon, and, with more pleasing light,
Shadowy sets off the face of things.’
_Paradise Lost_, V. 42–3.
‘_Denote a foregone conclusion._’ _Othello_, Act III. Scene 3.
‘_Take up the isles_,’ _etc._ _Isaiah_, xl. 15.
‘_So potent art._’ _The Tempest_, Act V. Scene 1.
170. ‘_More than natural._’ _Hamlet_, Act II. Scene 2.
‘_Gives to airy nothing_,’ _etc._ _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act
V. Scene 1.
Note. _His Life lately published._ Mrs. Graham’s (Lady Callcott’s)
_Memoirs of the Life of Nicholas Poussin_ (1820). See pp. 35–6.
Note. _Mr. West._ Benjamin West (1738–1820) succeeded Reynolds as
president of the Royal Academy in 1792.
171. _His Plague of Athens._ The Plague at Ashdod, in the Louvre. A
repetition of this picture, formerly in the Colonna Palace at
Rome, was presented to the National Gallery in 1838.
_His picture of the Deluge._ In the Louvre.
‘_O’er-informed._’ ‘And o’er-inform’d the tenement of clay.’
Dryden, _Absalom and Achitophel_, Part I. 158.
‘_The very stones_,’ _etc._ _Macbeth_, Act II. Scene 1.
_A picture of Aurora._ ‘Cephalus and Aurora’ now in the National
Gallery.
172. ‘_Leaping like wanton kids_,’ _etc._ _The Faerie Queene_, Book I.
Canto vi. Stanza 14.
_His picture of the shepherds._ In the Louvre, a picture often
referred to by Hazlitt.
‘_The valleys low_,’ _etc._ ‘Ye valleys low, where the mild
whispers use.’ _Lycidas_, 136.
‘_Within the book and volume_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act I. Scene 5.
‘_The sober certainty_,’ _etc._ _Comus_, 263.
‘_He who knows of these delights_,’ _etc._
‘He who of those delights can judge, and spare
To interpose them oft, is not unwise.’
Milton, Sonnet (No. XX.) To Mr. Lawrence.
173. ‘_Old Genius_,’ _etc._ _The Faerie Queene_, Book III. Canto vi.
Stanzas 31 and 32.
174. _Pictures are scattered_, _etc._
‘Thus pleasure is spread through the earth
In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find.’
Wordsworth, _Stray Pleasures_.
_The collections at Blenheim_, _etc._ See the volume containing
Hazlitt’s art criticisms.
_Since the Louvre is stripped_, _etc._ The art treasures which
Napoleon had pillaged from the various countries of Europe,
especially from Italy, were restored in 1815.
_The hunter of greatness_, _etc._ Cf. _ante_, p. 168. Napoleon
died on May 5, 1821.
ESSAY XVIII. ON MILTON’S SONNETS
Published in _The New Monthly Magazine_ (1822), vol. IV. p. 238, under
the title of ‘Table Talk, No. III.’
‘_Some fee-grief_,’ _etc._
‘Or is it a fee-grief
Due to some single breast?’
_Macbeth_, Act IV. Scene 3.
‘_To the height_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, l. 24.
‘_Most musical_,’ _etc._ _Il Penseroso_, 62.
175. ‘_Very tolerable_,’ _etc._ ‘To babble and to talk is most
tolerable and not to be endured.’ _Much Ado About Nothing_, Act
III. Scene 3.
‘_The divine_,’ _etc._ Pope, _Imitations of Horace_, Book II. Ep.
i. 69.
‘_From you have I been absent_,’ _etc._ Shakespeare, Sonnet
XCVIII.
_Warton’s Sonnets._ The poems of Thomas Warton (1728–1790) were
first collected in 1777, and more fully in 1791.
176. _Said to be sacred to Liberty._ The sonnets of which Hazlitt
speaks formed part of the ‘Poems dedicated to National
Independence and Liberty,’ published in the _Poems_ of 1807.
176. ‘_Oh Virtue_,’ _etc._ Quoted by Wordsworth in _The Excursion_,
Book III. 775–7.
‘_The poet blind and bold._’ ‘When I beheld the Poet, blind, yet
bold.’ Andrew Marvell, _On Paradise Lost_, I.
‘_Such recantation_,’ _etc._ Wordsworth, _The Excursion_, Book
III. 778.
‘_No longer to Kings_,’ _etc._ Southey, _Vision of Judgment_, IX.
177. ‘_On evil days_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, VII. 26.
‘_Cyriac, this three years’ day_,’ _etc._ Sonnet No. XXII.
_Those to Cromwell, to Fairfax and to the younger Vane._ Nos. XV.,
XVI., and XVII.
_On the late Massacre in Piedmont._ No. XVIII.
179. _Those to Mr. Henry Lawes, etc._ Nos. XIII. and XX.
_On his deceased Wife._ No. XXIII.
180. _To suppose that Milton only shone_, _etc._ Dr. Johnson in his
famous _Life of Milton_ says: ‘Milton never learnt the art of
doing little things with grace,’ etc.; and to Hannah More he
said (Boswell, ed. G. B. Hill, IV. 305): ‘Milton, Madam, was a
genius that could cut a colossus from a rock; but could not
carve heads upon cherry-stones.’
_His Letters to Donatus._ Hazlitt perhaps refers to Milton’s
letters to Charles Diodati.
‘_Severe in youthful virtue unreproved._’
‘and his grave rebuke
Severe in youthful beauty, added grace
Invincible.’
_Paradise Lost_, IV, 844–6.
ESSAY XIX. ON GOING A JOURNEY
Published in _The New Monthly Magazine_ (1822, vol. IV. p. 73) under the
heading ‘Table Talk, No. 1.’ Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in his edition of _Table
Talk_ gives some variations between the printed text of this essay and
the original MS.
181. ‘_The fields his study_,’ _etc._ Bloomfield, _The Farmer’s Boy_,
_Spring_, 31.
‘_A friend in my retreat_,’ _etc._ Cowper, _Retirement_, 741–2.
‘_May plume her feathers_,’ _etc._ _Comus_, 378–80.
182. ‘_Sunken wrack_,’ _etc._ ‘With sunken wreck and sumless
treasuries,’ _Henry V._, Act I. Scene 2.
‘_Leave, oh, leave me_,’ _etc._ See _ante_, note to p. 71.
‘_The very stuff of conscience._’ _Othello_, Act I. Scene 2.
‘_Out upon such half-faced fellowship._’ _Henry IV._, Part I. Act
I. Scene 3.
183. ‘_Give it an understanding_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act I. Scene 2.
_My old friend C—._ Coleridge. Cf. the essay on ‘My First
Acquaintance with Poets.’
‘_He talked far above singing._’ ‘I did hear you talk far above
singing.’ Beaumont and Fletcher, _Philaster_, Act V. Scene 5.
‘_That fine madness_,’ _etc._
‘For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a Poet’s brain.’
Drayton, _Censure of Poets_.
‘_Here be woods as green_,’ _etc._ John Fletcher’s _The Faithful
Shepherdess_, Act I. Scene 3.
184. L—. Lamb.
184. ‘_Take one’s ease at one’s inn._’ ‘Shall I not take mine ease in
mine inn?’ _Henry IV._, Part I. Act III. Scene 3.
‘_The cups that cheer_,’ _etc._ Cowper, _The Task_, IV. 39–40.
185. _Procul_, _etc._ _Aeneid_, VI. 258.
‘_Unhoused free condition_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act I. Scene 2.
‘_Lord of one’s-self_,’ _etc._ ‘Lord of yourself, uncumber’d with
a wife.’ Dryden, _Epistle to John Driden_, 18.
_Gribelin’s engravings_, _etc._ Simon Gribelin’s (1661–1733)
engravings of the cartoons were published in 1707.
186. _Paul and Virginia._ Bernardin de St. Pierre’s famous romance
(1788).
_At Bridgewater._ In the course of his visit to Coleridge who
lived at Nether Stowey. See ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets.’
_Madame D’Arblay’s Camilla._ Published in 1796.
_The letter I chose_, _etc._ _La Nouvelle Héloïse_, Part IV.
Letter XVII.
‘_Green upland swells_,’ _etc._ Coleridge, _Ode on the Departing
Year_, VII. 5–6.
‘_Glittered green_,’ _etc._ _Ib._ VII. 4.
187. ‘_Beyond Hyde Park_,’ _etc._ In Sir George Etherege’s _The Man of
Mode_ (Act V. Scene 2) Harriet says to Dorimant: ‘I know all
beyond Hyde Park is a desert to you, and that no gallantry can
draw you farther.’
188. ‘_The mind in its own place._’ _Paradise Lost_, I. 254.
_I once took a party_, _etc._ Hazlitt went with Charles and Mary
Lamb to Oxford in August, 1810. Cf. Hazlitt’s essay ‘On the
Conversation of Authors’ in _The Plain Speaker_, and _Memoirs of
William Hazlitt_, _l._ 172.
‘_With glistering spires_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 550.
_At Blenheim._ Lamb refers to this visit to Blenheim in a letter
to Hazlitt, August 9, 1810. _Letters_, ed. Ainger, I. 251.
189. _Dr. Johnson remarked._ See Boswell’s _Life_, ed. G. B. Hill, III.
352.
ESSAY XX. ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS
Some variations from the MS. are given in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of
_Table Talk_.
190. ‘_They live and move_,’ _etc._ _Acts_, xvii. 28.
_The Queen_, _etc._ Queen Caroline returned to England in June
1820, and died on August 7, 1821. During that time her case was
of course the chief topic of conversation in London. George IV.
was crowned on July 19, 1821.
‘_That of an hour’s age_,’ _etc._ _Macbeth_, Act IV. Scene 3.
_The Two-penny Post-Bag._ Moore’s, published in 1813.
_The Westminster Election._ Two memorable elections took place in
Westminster in 1819 and 1820. In the first Hobhouse was defeated
by George Lamb; in the second he was successful.
_Have nothing farther to say._ In the MS. this sentence is
followed by ‘They are like an oyster at the ebb of the tide,
gaping for fresh _tidings_.’
_The Bridge Street Association._ The Constitutional Association
or, as it was called by its opponents, ‘The Bridge Street Gang,’
founded in 1821 ‘to support the laws for suppressing seditious
publications, and for defending the country from the fatal
influence of disloyalty and sedition.’ The Association was an
ill-conducted party organisation and created so much opposition
by its imprudent prosecutions that it very soon disappeared. See
an article in _The Edinburgh Review_ for June, 1822. (Vol.
XXXVII. p. 110).
_Mr. Cobbett’s Letter._ Cobbett’s Letter ‘To Mr. James Cropper, a
Quaker Merchant of Liverpool, on his letter to Mr. Wilberforce
relating to East India and West India Sugar,’ appeared in the
_Weekly Register_ on July 21, 1821 (Vol. XL. p. 1.)
191. ‘_Any six of these men in buckram._’ See Henry IV. Part I., Act
II. Scene 4.
Note. This note is not in the MS., but the words ‘Draper’ and
‘Radical Tobacco’ are jotted down in the text.
_As Trim blew up the army_, _etc._ _Tristram Shandy_, III. 20.
Note. ‘_Dream on, blest pair_,’ _etc._
‘Sleep on,
Blest pair! and O! yet happiest, if ye seek
No happier state, and know to know no more.’
_Paradise Lost_, IV. 773–5.
192. _Beaumont in his verses to Ben Jonson._ First published in 1647.
_The S—._ The Southampton Coffee House in Southampton Buildings,
at the corner of Chancery Lane. See _Memoirs of William Hazlitt_
I. 291–300.
_M—._ George Mounsey, of Mounsey and Gray, Solicitors in Staple
Inn.
_Signor Friscobaldo._ In Dekker’s _The Honest Whore_. Cf.
_Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth_
(vol. V. pp. 335 _et seq._).
_The clerk of St. Andrews._ Webster is said to have been clerk of
the parish of St. Andrews, Holborn.
‘_Within the red-leaved tables of the heart._’ Heywood’s _A Woman
Killed with Kindness_, Act II. Scene 3.
‘_Writ in water._’ A phrase used by Shakespeare (‘their virtues we
write in water,’ _Henry VIII._, Act IV. Scene 2) and other
Elizabethan dramatists, and now chiefly remembered in connection
with Keats’s epitaph on himself: ‘Here lies one whose name was
writ in water.’
193. ‘_Wit-skirmishes._’ ‘They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit
between them.’ _Much Ado About Nothing_, Act I. Scene 1.
‘_Brave sublunary things._’ [translunary.] Drayton, _Elegy to
Henry Reynolds, Esq._
‘_Nothing but vanity, chaotic vanity._’ Cf. ‘O heavy lightness!
serious vanity! Mis-shapen chaos!’ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act I.
Scene 1.
_The Globe._ In Fleet Street, formerly frequented by Goldsmith.
_The Rainbow._ No. 15 Fleet Street. The tavern still exists.
_The Mitre._ Johnson’s Mitre, usually supposed to be the one in
Mitre Court, Fleet Street. The older Mitre Tavern of Elizabethan
days was further west on the site of Messrs. Hoares’ Bank.
194. _G—._ George Kirkpatrick.
Note. _A complete Master Stephen._ In Ben Jonson’s _Every Man in
his Humour_.
195. _Misconceiving what they say._ In the top-margin of the MS. the
following words are jotted down: ‘Bostock, unruffled, Paine,
Knight, Hope.’ It would seem that Hazlitt had in his mind
Richard Payne Knight (see _The Round Table_, vol. I. p. 143),
and possibly the physician John Bostock the younger and Thomas
Hope the author of _Anastasius_.
‘_So shall their anticipation_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act II. Scene 2.
_The Mourning Bride._ Congreve’s tragedy which contains (Act II.
Scene 3) the famous description of a temple which Johnson
thought ‘the finest poetical passage he had ever read’
(Boswell’s _Life_, ed. G. B. Hill, II. 85).
_No Michael Cassio._
‘a great arithmetician,
One Michael Cassio, a Florentine.’
_Othello_, Act I. Scene 1.
195. _R—._ Roger Kirkpatrick.
_Old S—._ Sarratt, the chess-player. See p. 196 note.
_M—._ Mounsey.
_H— and A—._ Hume and Ayrton. Joseph Hume of the Pipe Office, not
the Radical M.P. (See ‘Lamb’s Letters,’ ed. W. C. Hazlitt, I.
361, note 1), and William Ayrton, twice Director of the Music at
the King’s Theatre (where he produced _Don Giovanni_), better
known as a regular attendant at Lamb’s Wednesday Evenings.
Instead of this sentence the ms. reads:—‘H— and A— taking their
friendly stroll in the Park of a morning like a couple of old
post-horses put out to grass. Him of Cockayne who went to
Margate by water to save charges, and another of that ilk who
went by land for the better display of his person.’ Lamb
describes his voyage to Margate in ‘The Old Margate Hoy.’
196. _M— B—._ Lamb’s friend Martin Burney, the son of Admiral Burney.
_M—df—rd._ William Mudford, editor of _The Courier_ (see _ante_,
p. 111), wrote _The Contemplatist_, or Series _of Essays upon
Morals and Literature_. (1811).
‘_As is the ribbed sea-sand._’ Coleridge says that for the lines
in _The Ancient Mariner_ (Part IV. Stanza 1)
‘And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand,’
he was indebted to Wordsworth.
‘_For Kais is fled_,’ _etc._ Hazlitt seems to be recalling an
opera entitled ‘Kais; or Love in the Deserts’ (1808 Drury Lane)
by Isaac Brandon, founded on Isaac Disraeli’s romance, ‘Mejnoun
and Leila.’
_The death of Buonaparte._ May 5, 1821.
_Dr. L—._ Dr. Whittle.
198. _Mr. Canning’s pension._ Cf. _Political Essays_, Vol. III. note to
p. 301.
199. _M—._ Mounsey.
_Mrs. Battle._ _Essays of Elia_, ed. Ainger, p. 49. The essay had
recently (Feb. 1821) appeared in _The London Magazine_.
_Tobin._ John Tobin (1770–1804), author of _The Honey-Moon_ (see
Vol V. p. 345).
_The Cider-Cellar._ No. 20 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden.
_The London Institution._ Now in Finsbury Circus, established in
1806 in Old Jewry. Porson was the first librarian and died there
in 1808.
200. _W—._ Charles Jeremiah Wells (1799?–1879) a solicitor, shortly
after the date of this essay produced _Stories after Nature_
(1822) and the dramatic poem _Joseph and his Brethren_ (1824).
This last was long afterwards warmly praised by D. G. Rossetti
and Mr. Swinburne (_Fortnightly Review_, Feb. 1875), and was
republished in 1876 by Mr. Buxton Forman. Wells in 1830 placed a
memorial to Hazlitt in St. Anne’s, Soho. See Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s
_Four Generations of a Literary Family_, l. 159–162.
_That of Killigrew’s country-cousin._ _Memoirs of Count Grammont_,
chap. 9.
_The Chevalier Hamilton’s assignation._ _Ib._ chap. 9.
_Jacob Hall’s prowess._ _Ib._ chap. 6.
_Miss Stuart’s garters._ _Ib._ chap. 8.
_Miss Churchill is first introduced._ _Ib._ chap. 10.
‘_Fear and niceness_,’ _etc._ _Cymbeline_, Act III. Scene 4.
201. _Mr. H— and Mr. A—._ Hume and Ayrton.
_Such a one_, _etc._ _As You Like It_, Act III. Scene 1.
202. _Variety is indispensable._ In the MS. opposite this sentence is
written ‘Jacky Taylor.—Mr. Tomkins the penman.’
‘_Yet so as with a difference._’ Cf. ‘You must wear your rue with
a difference,’ _Hamlet_, Act IV. Scene 5.
_Randall’s._ ‘The Hole in the Wall’ in Chancery Lane, kept by Jack
Randall, the pugilist. See Hazlitt’s essay ‘The Fight,’ and ‘On
Londoners and Country People’ in _The Plain Speaker_ (vol. VII.
p. 66).
_Long’s._ No. 16 New Bond Street, rebuilt and enlarged in 1888.
_H—’s conversation._ Leigh Hunt’s. Cf. a passage in _The Round
Table_, vol. I. p. 43.
_He is nearly the best._ ‘Nearly’ was added in proof.
‘_Or like a gate of steel_,’ _etc._ _Troilus and Cressida_, Act
III. Scene 3.
203. _B— C—’s._ Barry Cornwall’s.
_A young literary bookseller._ John Martin, perhaps, of the firm
of Rodwell and Martin, Holles Street, Cavendish Square. See
Keats’s _Complete Works_, ed. H. Buxton Forman (1901), Vol. IV.
p. 34 note.
_A ‘Circean herd.’_ Cf. _Comus_, 152–3 and _Paradise Lost_, IX.
522.
ESSAY XXI. ON THE ARISTOCRACY OF LETTERS
205. _‘Ha! here’s three of us,’ etc. King Lear_, Act III. Scene 4.
_Stat nominis umbra._ ‘Stat magni nominis umbra.’ Lucan,
_Pharsalia_, I. 135.
_— House._ Holland House. Cf. _Political Essays_ (vol. III. p.
44).
‘_Continents have most_,’ _etc._ Hobbes, _Human Nature_ (_Works_,
ed. Molesworth), IV. 50.
‘_O that mine enemy_,’ _etc._ _Job_, xxxi. 35.
Note. _Lord H—._ The third Lord Holland.
Note. _Sir J— M—._ Sir James Mackintosh.
Note. ‘_The first row of the rubric._’ Cf. ‘The first row of the
pious chanson will show you more.’ _Hamlet_, Act II. Scene 2.
206. _A third makes the indecency pass_, _etc._ The reference is
clearly to Richard Payne Knight whose first publication (1786)
was _An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Priapus lately
existing in Isernia, etc._, and who in 1816 gave evidence before
a select committee of the House of Commons against the national
acquisition of the Elgin Marbles.
207. ‘_Cannot command it_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 2.
‘_Monster’d._’ ‘To hear my nothings monster’d.’ _Coriolanus_, Act
II. Scene 2.
‘_Ducks to the learned fool._’ _Timon of Athens_, Act IV. Scene 3.
‘_He that is but able_,’ _etc._ _Satire upon the Abuse of Human
Learning_, 67–70.
208. ‘_’Twas mine_,’ _etc._ Cf. ‘’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been
slave to thousands.’ _Othello_, Act III. Scene 3.
_The Cider-cellar._ See _ante_, p. 199.
_The Hole in the Wall._ In Chancery Lane. See _ante_, note to p.
202.
209. _The B— family._ The Burneys.
‘_In numbers numberless._’ _Paradise Regained_, III. 310.
_The founder of it._ Dr. Charles Burney (1726–1814), the friend of
Johnson and author of _A History of Music_ (4 vols. 1776–1789).
_Madame D—._ Frances Burney (1752–1840), Madame D’Arblay, Dr.
Burney’s daughter, author of _Evelina_ and _Cecilia_.
_The rest have done nothing_, _etc._ ‘The rest’ include Dr.
Burney’s two sons, Charles Burney the younger (1757–1817), the
Greek scholar, referred to by Hazlitt more than once, especially
in connection with his _Remarks on the Greek Verses of Milton_
(1790), and James Burney (1750–1821), familiar to readers of
Lamb’s _Letters_ as Captain and Admiral Burney, author of _A
Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Sea or
Pacific Ocean_ (5 vols. 1803–1817), part of which is famous as
_The Buccaneers of America_; Sarah Harriet Burney (1770–1844),
Dr. Burney’s youngest daughter, author of _Clarentine_ (1796)
and other novels and tales; and Martin Charles Burney, Lamb’s
friend, the son of Admiral Burney.
209. _The most celebrated author_, _etc._ Sir Walter Scott, created a
baronet by George IV. in 1820.
_Lord Byron complains._ See the Preface to _Marino Faliero_
(1820).
‘_Let but a lord_,’ _etc._ Pope, _An Essay on Criticism_, 420–1.
210. _Decorum, which Milton declares_, _etc._ On Education, _Works_,
1738, I. 140.
‘_Bears a charmed reputation_,’ _etc._
‘I bear a charmed life, which must not yield
To one of woman born.’
_Macbeth_, Act V. Scene 8.
‘_Leave no rubs_,’ _etc._ ‘To leave no rubs nor botches in the
work.’ _Ib._ Act III. Scene 1.
_That strange letter about Pope._ Byron wrote two Letters to
* * * *—* * * * * * [John Murray], _on the Rev. Wm. L. Bowles’s
Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope_, the first of which
(referred to by Hazlitt) was published in 1821. The second did
not appear till 1835. Both letters and a full account of the
whole controversy are given in Byron’s _Letters and Journals_
(ed. Prothero), V. Appendix iii.
_Why did he pronounce_, _etc._ ‘These two writers [Pope and
Cowper], for Cowper is no poet, come into comparison in one
great work, the translation of Homer.’ Byron’s _Letters and
Journals_ (ed. Prothero), V. 557.
‘_Finding out a borrowed line_,’ _etc._ See _The Spirit of the
Age_, vol. IV. p. 346 and note.
_A rich merchant_, _etc._ Hazlitt perhaps refers to ‘Anastasius’
Hope, Rogers, Byron, and Burns.
‘_What should such fellows_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 1.
‘_Coining our hearts_,’ _etc._
‘By heaven, I had rather coin my heart,
And drop my blood for drachmas,’ etc.
_Julius Caesar_, Act IV. Scene 3.
‘_Sent back like hallowmas_,’ _etc._ ‘Sent back like Hallowmas or
short’st of day.’ _Richard II._, Act V. Scene 1.
211. ‘_With wine of Attic taste_,’
‘What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
Of Attic taste, with wine,’ etc.
Milton, Sonnet XX. (to Mr. Lawrence).
_Poor Keats._ See _ante_, p. 99.
‘_The fairest flowers_,’ _etc._
‘the fairest flowers o’ the season
Are our carnations and streak’d gillyvors.’
_Winter’s Tale_, Act IV. Scene 4.
‘_Rue for remembrance_,’ _etc._ ‘There’s rosemary, that’s for
remembrance: pray you, love, remember: and there’s pansies,
that’s for thoughts.’ _Hamlet_, Act IV. Scene 5.
211. ‘_Nor could the Muse_,’ _etc._
‘nor could the Muse defend
Her son.’
_Paradise Lost_, VII. 37.
_M—’s shop._ The shop of John Murray, publisher of _The Quarterly
Review_.
_T—._ Mr. W. Hazlitt, the younger, in his edition of _Table Talk_,
filled up this blank with the name of Tom Hill (1760–1840), a
well-known figure in the literary society of the time. The
_Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica_ (1815) was chiefly based on his
collection of poets.
213. _—, the responsible conductor_, _etc._ Mr. W. Hazlitt, the
younger, filled this blank with the name of John Britton
(1771–1857), the antiquary and topographer, author or part
author of many topographical works, of which _The Beauties of
England and Wales_ (1801–1816) and _Architectural Antiquities of
Great Britain_ (1805–1814) are the best known.
_Learned lumber._ ‘With loads of learned lumber in his head.’
Pope, _Essay on Criticism_, 613.
_Jack T. of the Sun._ John Taylor (1757–1832), proprietor of the
_Sun_, author of _Monsieur Tonson_. In 1832 he published
_Records of my Life_ (2 vols.).
‘_The Sun of our table._’ ‘This bottle’s the sun of our table.’
Sheridan, _The Duenna_, Act III. Scene 5.
_Peter Pindar._ Dr. John Wolcot (1738–1819), the Satirist.
_Mr. Tomkins the penman._ Thomas Tomkins (1743–1816), caligrapher.
_Sir Joshua’s picture of him._ Bequeathed by Tomkins to the City
of London.
ESSAY XXII. ON CRITICISM
214. _De omni scibile_, _etc._ The origin of this saying seems obscure.
See _Notes and Queries_, 7th Ser. IX. 500 and Larousse, _Fleurs
Latines_, 94.
_We may sometimes see articles of this sort._ Hazlitt had himself
suffered from this form of reviewing. See notes to _Reply to
Malthus_, vol. IV. p. 399.
215. ‘_As when a well-graced actor_,’ _etc._ _Richard II._, Act V.
Scene 2.
_Much as Peter Pounce_, _etc._ _Joseph Andrews_, Book III. Chap.
13.
‘_Assumes the rod_,’ _etc._
‘Assumes the god,
Affects to nod,
And seems to shake the spheres.’
Dryden, _Alexander’s Feast_, 39–41.
216. _The most admired of our Reviews._ _The Edinburgh Review._
_The Monthly Review._ Founded by Ralph Griffiths in 1749. The
Review ran through three series and came to an end in 1845.
‘_Sole sovereign sway_,’ _etc._ _Macbeth_, Act I. Scene 5.
‘_Outdoing termagant_,’ _etc._ ‘I would have such a fellow whipped
for o’erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod.’ _Hamlet_, Act
III. Scene 2.
‘_And of their port_,’ _etc._ ‘And of his port as meke as is a
mayde.’ Chaucer, _Canterbury Tales_, Prologue, 69.
216. _Drawcansir work._ See the Duke of Buckingham’s _The Rehearsal_,
Act V. Scene 1., where Drawcansir says:
‘Others may boast a single man to kill:
But I the blood of thousands daily kill,’ etc.
_Tristram Shandy_. _Tristram Shandy_ was violently attacked by
Griffiths in _The Monthly Review_.
Note. _Rev. Dr. Kippis._ Andrew Kippis (1724–1795), Nonconformist
divine and editor of the 2nd edition of _Biographia Britannica_
(5 vols. 1778–1793).
_The Monthly Review_ for Feb. 1751 (Vol. IV. p. 309), in its
‘Monthly Catalogue’ contained the following notice: ‘An Elegy
wrote in a country churchyard. 4to. Dodsley, 6^d. Seven pages.
The excellence of this little piece amply compensates for its
want of quantity.’ A full review followed in June, 1753 (Vol.
VIII. p. 477).
217. _Dryden’s Prefaces._ Dryden’s principal essays on literary
subjects have recently been edited by Prof. Ker (2 vols. 1900).
See also Prof. Saintsbury’s _History of Criticism_, vol. II. pp.
371–391.
Note. For Dryden’s comparison between Ovid and Virgil, see his
_Dedication of the Aeneid_ (1697—_Essays_, ed. Ker, II. 154 _et
seq._), and for his character of Shakespeare _An Essay on
Dramatic Poesy_ (1668—_ib_. I. 79–80). Cf. _Lectures on the
English Poets_, vol. V. p. 82, note.
218. _Dryden had no other way_, _etc._ Dryden’s Opera _The State of
Innocence_, founded upon _Paradise Lost_, was published in 1674.
‘_Graces snatched_,’ _etc._ Pope, _Essay on Criticism_, 155.
219. ‘_Looks commercing with the skies._’ _Il Penseroso_, 39.
‘_The limbs and flourishes_,’ _etc._
‘Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,’ _etc._
_Hamlet_, Act II. Scene 2.
_As Lord Byron asserts_, _etc._ In his Letter to John Murray,
referred to above (p. 210, note), Byron says: ‘The poet is
always ranked according to his execution, and not according to
his branch of art.’ (_Letters and Journals_, ed. Prothero, V.
553).
220. _Mrs. Dickons._ Maria Dickons (1770?–1833) made her first
appearance in London in 1793. She sang at the Drury Lane
oratorios in 1813 and 1815, and retired in 1820. Like Miss
Stephens (see _A View of the English Stage_) she played Polly in
_The Beggar’s Opera_.
_Madame Catalani_. _Angelica Catalani_ (1779–1849), the most
famous prima donna of her time. She was in England in 1821 and
sang ‘God Save the King’ on the 16th of July, shortly before the
King’s coronation.
‘_Such sweet thunder._’ _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act IV. Scene
1.
‘_The very milk of human kindness._’ ‘It is too full o’ the milk
of human kindness.’ _Macbeth_, Act I. Scene 5.
‘_Beauty out of favour_,’ _etc._ Hazlitt refers to Gifford’s lines
on Mrs. Robinson. See _A Letter to William Gifford_, vol. I. p.
378 and note.
221. _Like Justice Woodcock._ In Bickerstaffe’s _Love in a Village_
(1762).
_Rifle the flowers, etc._ See _A Letter to William Gifford_, vol.
I.
_The Great Cat Rodilardus._ In Rabelais, _Pantagruel_, IV. 67.
‘_Demure-looking_,’ _etc._ ‘The grave, demure, insidious,
spring-nailed, velvet-pawed, green-eyed philosophers.’ Burke,
_Letter to a Noble Lord_ (_Works_, Bohn, V. 142.)
221. Note. _Tom Jones_, Book VI. chap. 14.
222. _What silenced the masked battery_, _etc._ It is now well known
that Sir Walter Scott strongly disapproved of Lockhart’s
connection with _Blackwood’s Magazine_ long before the attacks
of John Scott in _The London Magazine_ for 1820 and 1821. See
Mr. Lang’s _Life of Lockhart_ (vol. I. chap, ix.), for an
account of the whole matter.
‘_Pilloried on infamy’s high stage._’ Cowper, _Hope_, 556.
223. _The controversy about Pope._ The controversy on the question as
to whether or not Pope was a poet began with the publication of
Bowles’s edition of Pope’s _Works_ (10 vols. 1806) and had
recently reached an acute stage in consequence of Byron’s letter
to John Murray. See Byron’s _Letters and Journals_, ed.
Prothero, V. 522–592, where a full account is given of the whole
controversy. Hazlitt had contributed to _The Edinburgh Magazine_
(Feb. 1818) an essay ‘On the question whether Pope was a poet’
reproduced with a few alterations in his lecture on Dryden and
Pope (see vol. V. pp. 69 _et seq._), and to _The London
Magazine_ (June, 1821) a long essay (republished for the first
time in the present edition) entitled ‘Pope, Lord Byron, and Mr.
Bowles.’
224. ‘_Crib and cabin in_,’ ‘Now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confined.’
_Macbeth_, Act III. Scene 4.
‘_Lack-lustre eye._’ _As You Like It_, Act II. Scene 7.
_The late Joseph Fawcett._ Hazlitt frequently refers to this early
friend. See _Memoirs of William Hazlitt_, I. 75–79. Fawcett was
well known as a Sunday evening lecturer at the old Jewry, and
published some volumes of Sermons and Poems. He died in 1804,
and it was at one time reported that Hazlitt intended to write
his life.
‘_I have heard my mother Circe_,’ _etc._ _Comus_, ll. 252 _et
seq._
‘_Heard others read their own._’ Hazlitt no doubt refers to
Wordsworth and Coleridge.
225. _He was not exceptious._ Hazlitt elsewhere complains of Lamb for
being what he here describes as ‘exceptious.’ See _The Plain
Speaker_, ‘On the Conversation of Authors.’
‘_That had I all knowledge_,’ _etc._ See _I Corinthians_, xiii. 1
and 2.
_The Occult School._ Hazlitt clearly refers to Coleridge. See _The
Plain Speaker_, (‘On the Conversation of Authors’), where he
says: ‘C— [Coleridge] withholds his tribute of applause from
every person in whom any mortal but himself can descry the least
glimpse of understanding,’ _etc._
226. ‘_An ounce of sour_,’ _etc._ ‘A dram of sweete is worth a pound of
sowre,’ _The Faerie Queene_, Book I. Canto III. Stanza 30.
_Caviare to the multitude._ ‘’Twas caviare to the general.’
_Hamlet_, Act II. Scene 2.
_Verbal critics_, _etc._ Such as Gifford. Cf. _A Letter to William
Gifford_, vol. I. p. 368.
Note. See _Ib._ note to p. 368.
ESSAY XXII. ON GREAT AND LITTLE THINGS
Published in _The New Monthly Magazine_ (1822), vol. IV. p. 127, under
the title of ‘Table Talk No. II.’
‘_These little things_,’ _etc._ Goldsmith, _The Traveller_, l. 42.
227. ‘_Some trick not worth an egg._’ _Coriolanus_, Act IV. Scene 4.
_Paper in the Tatler._ No. 79 (by Steele).
229. ‘_Anon as patient_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act V. Scene 1.
_The swaggering of Pistol._ See especially the Second Part of
_Henry IV._
_King Cambyses’ vein._ _Henry IV._, Part I. Act II. Scene 4.
230. _Si Pergama dextra_, _etc._ _Aeneid_, II. 291–2.
230. Note. That is, shortly before Napoleon’s death on May 5, 1821.
232. _The maxim, which the wise man_, _etc._ ‘For, as the old hermit of
Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece
of King Gorboduc, “That that is is,”’ _etc._ _Twelfth Night_,
Act IV. Scene 2.
_When L—’s farce_, _etc._ Lamb’s farce _Mr. H—_ was performed at
Drury Lane on December 10, 1806.
_Gentleman Lewis._ William Thomas Lewis (1748?–1811), ‘Gentleman
Lewis,’ belonged to ‘the other House,’ Covent Garden.
_The Prologue._ Spoken by Elliston who would have tried the farce
again.
_The Travellers._ By Andrew Cherry (1762–1812), first produced at
Drury Lane on January 22, 1806.
‘_Wit-skirmishes._’ See _ante_, note to p. 193.
233. ‘_Subject to all the skyey influences._’ ‘Servile to all the skyey
influences.’ _Measure for Measure_, Act III. Scene 1,
234. ‘_Pleased with a feather_,’ _etc._ ‘Pleased with a rattle, tickled
with a straw.’ Pope’s _Essay on Man_, II. 276.
_Will Wimble._ See _The Spectator_, No. 108 (by Addison).
_Some poets compose and sing their own verses._ Moore, for
example.
235. ‘_Misfortune_,’ _etc._ ‘Misery acquaints a man with strange
bed-fellows.’ _The Tempest_, Act II. Scene 2.
‘_Take care of the pence_,’ _etc._ Quoted by Lord Chesterfield
(_Letters to his Son_, Nov. 6, 1747, and Feb. 5, 1750) as the
saying of ‘a very covetous sordid fellow,’ William Lowndes,
Secretary of the Treasury 1695–1724.
_But shouldst thou ever, my Infelice_, _etc._ An invocation to
Sarah Walker. See _Liber Amoris_, vol. II.
236. _Madame V—._ Madame Vestris (1797–1856), the famous actress,
afterwards the wife of the younger Mathews.
_A gallery equal to Cowley’s._ See Cowley’s _The Chronicle, A
Ballad_.
_Mr. Davison._ Thomas Davison, of Whitefriars, printer of the
first edition of _Table Talk_.
236. _D’un pathétique_, _etc._ ‘Nous nous écrivions d’un pathétique à
faire fendre les rochers.’ Rousseau, _Confessions_, Liv. I.
‘_Hunt the wind_,’ _etc._ See _ante_, note to p. 97.
237. _The Death of Clorinda._ From a picture of Lodovic Lana. Mr. W. C.
Hazlitt (_Table Talk_, p. 331) says that the copy was made in
1802. It is still in his possession.
238. _They succeed best in fiction._ Cf. Vol. III., note to p. 49.
_Berenice’s locks and Ariadne’s crown._ Mr. W. C. Hazlitt quotes:
‘We put on Berenice’s hair,
And sit in Cassiopeia’s chair.’
Dixon’s _Canidia, or The Witches_.
‘Ariadne’s crowne and Cassiopeia’s chayre.’
Randolph’s _Poems_, 1640, p. 14.
Cf. also:
‘Not Berenice’s locks first rose so bright.’
Pope, _Rape of the Lock_, v. 129.
‘_Anthony Codrus Urceus_,’ _etc._ This paragraph is taken from a
paper in the Round Table Series (No. 9, _The Examiner_, Feb. 26,
1815) which was republished in _Winterslow_ (1839) under the
title of ‘Mind and Motive.’
239. _The Story of Sir Isaac Newton._ The story is familiar, but the
dog’s name was ‘Diamond.’
240. ‘_Like the fly on the wheel._’ Æsop’s _Fables_ (No. 270).
241. _Mr. Bone’s enamels._ Henry Bone (1755–1834), the celebrated
painter on enamel, elected R.A. in 1811. He executed eighty-five
‘Portraits of Illustrious Englishmen’ copied from pictures in
the royal and other collections.
_Denner._ See _ante_, p. 133.
243. ‘_First row of the rubric._’ See _ante_, note to p. 205 note.
ESSAY XXIV. ON FAMILIAR STYLE
A few variations of the text from the MS. are given in Mr. W. C.
Hazlitt’s edition of _Table Talk_.
245. _His papers under the signature of Elia._ In _The London
Magazine_. The first, ‘Recollections of the South Sea House,’
appeared in August 1820.
_Mrs. Battle’s Opinions on Whist._ _The London Magazine_, Feb.
1821.
‘_A well of native English undefiled._’
‘Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled,
On Fame’s eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled.’
Spenser, _The Faerie Queene_, Book IV. Canto ii. Stanza 32.
_Erasmus’s Colloquies._ The _Colloquia_, which appeared in 1519.
246. ‘_What do you read?_’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act II. Scene 2.
_Sermo humi obrepens._ Cf.
‘Nec sermones ego mallem
Repentes per humum quam res componere gestas.’
Horace, _Epistles_, II. i. 250–1.
‘_Ambition is more lowly._’ Cf.
‘My affections
Are then most humble; I have no ambition
To see a goodlier man.’
_The Tempest_, Act I. Scene 2.
‘_Unconsidered trifles._’ _A Winter’s Tale_, Act IV. Scene 3.
‘_That strut_,’ _etc._ _Macbeth_, Act V. Scene 5.
‘_‘And on their pens_,’ _etc._ Cf.
‘And on his crest
Sat Horror plumed.’
_Paradise Lost_, IV. 988–9.
247. ‘_Nature’s own sweet_,’ _etc._ _Twelfth Night_, Act I. Scene 5.
248. _Cowper’s description._
‘’Twas transient in its nature, as in show
’Twas durable: as worthless as it seemed
Intrinsically precious; to the foot
Treacherous and false; it smiled, and it was cold.’
_The Task_, V. 173–6.
ESSAY XXV. ON EFFEMINACY OF CHARACTER
248. ‘_The gossamer_,’ _etc._
‘the gossamer
That idles in the wanton summer air.’
_Romeo and Juliet_, Act II. Scene 6.
‘_Rolls o’er Elysian flowers_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 359.
249. ‘_Die of a rose_,’ _etc._ Pope, _Essay on Man_, I. 200.
‘_Oh, leave me to my repose._’ See _ante_, note to p. 71.
‘_They shall discourse_,’ _etc._ _Cymbeline_, Act III. Scene 3.
‘_Bide the pelting_,’ _etc._ _King Lear_, Act III. Scene 4.
‘_They take no thought_,’ _etc._ _St. Matthew_, vi. 34.
‘_Get up to be hanged._’ _Measure for Measure_, Act IV. Scene 3.
250. ‘_A cell of ignorance._’ _Cymbeline_, Act III. Scene 3.
‘_Oh! blindness_,’ _etc._ Pope, _Essay on Man_, I. 85–6.
251. ‘_And let us muse_,’ _etc._ Wordsworth, _Lines written while
sailing in a boat at evening_ (published in the Lyrical Ballads,
1798), ll. 13–16.
_But oh thou!_ Hazlitt apostrophises Coleridge. See the essay, ‘My
first acquaintance with Poets.’
253. ‘_A dish of skimmed milk._’ _Henry IV._, Part I. Act II. Scene 3.
‘_A generous friendship_,’ _etc._ Pope, Homer’s _Iliad_, IX.
725–6.
254. ‘_Calm, peaceable writers._’ Dryden. _An Essay of Dramatic Poesy._
(_Essays_, ed. Ker, I. 31.)
255. ‘_‘Vernal delight and joy._’ _Paradise Lost_, IV. 155.
‘_‘Like Maia’s son_,’ _etc._ _Ib._, V. 285–6.
ESSAY XXVI. WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE
‘_Descry new lands_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 290–1.
_Ethereal mould, sky-tinctured._ Phrases borrowed without
acknowledgment from Milton (_Paradise Lost_, II. 139, and V.
285).
‘_But thou, oh Hope_,’ _etc._ Collins, _The Passions_, 29–32.
256. _I lived within sight_, _etc._ At Wem, in Shropshire, within sight
of the Welsh hills. Cf. a passage in the first paragraph of ‘My
First Acquaintance with Poets.’
‘_Yarrow unvisited._’ Wordsworth’s three poems, _Yarrow
Unvisited_, _Yarrow Visited_, and _Yarrow Revisited_, were
published in 1807, 1814, and 1835 respectively.
‘_Unmould their essence._’ Cf. ‘Unmoulding reason’s mintage.’
_Comus_, 529.
‘_A mighty stream of tendency._’ Wordsworth, _The Excursion_, IX.
87.
‘_A tide in the affairs of men._’ _Julius Caesar_, Act IV. Scene
3.
‘_With sails and tackle torn._’ ‘Though shrouds and tackle torn.’
_Paradise Lost_, II. 1044.
‘_Such tricks hath_,’ _etc._ _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act V.
Scene 1.
257. ‘_Hangs upon the beatings_,’ _etc._ Wordsworth, _Lines composed a
few miles above Tintern Abbey_, 54.
‘_Come thronging soft desires._’ ‘Come thronging soft and delicate
desires.’ _Much Ado About Nothing_, Act I. Scene 1.
‘_Bring back the hour_,’ _etc._ Wordsworth, _Intimations of
Immortality_.
‘_That first garden of my innocence._’ ‘In that first garden of
our simplenesse.’ Daniel, _Hymen’s Triumph_.
258. ‘_Like the sweet south._’ _Twelfth Night_, Act I. Scene 1.
_W—m._ Wem.
258. ‘_Thing of life._’ ‘She walks the waters like a thing of life,’
Byron, _The Corsair_, Canto I. Scene 3.
‘_Like some gay creature_,’ _etc._ _Comus_, 299.
_Mr. Leigh Hunt has treated it_, _etc._ In an essay entitled ‘A
nearer view of some of the shops,’ _The Indicator_ (1850
edition), Part I. p. 81. _The Indicator_ ran from Oct. 13, 1819,
to March 21, 1821.
259. _After an interval of thirty years._ See Introduction, vol. I. p.
9.
‘_How silver-sweet_,’ _etc._ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act II. Scene 2.
Note. _Wilkie’s Blind Fiddler._ In the National Gallery.
260. ‘_Like an exhalation_,’ _etc._ ‘Rose like a steam of rich
distilled perfumes,’ _Comus_, 556.
_Mr. Fearn’s Essay._ See _ante_, pp. 63–65.
263. ‘_There’s sympathy._’ _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, Act II. Scene
1.
_—, the editor of a Scotch magazine._ The reference here and three
lines below seems to be to Lockhart, who was accused of being
editor of _Blackwood’s Magazine_. See Mr. Lang’s _Life of
Lockhart_, vol. I. chap. ix.
‘_Those faultless monsters_,’ _etc._ John Sheffield, Duke of
Buckingham, _Essay on Poetry_.
‘_The web of our lives_,’ _etc._ _All’s Well that Ends Well_, Act
IV. Scene 3.
ESSAY XXVII. ON CORPORATE BODIES
Many instances of variation between the MS. and the text of this essay
are given by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in his edition of _Table Talk_. ‘The MS.
and the printed copy’ (he says, p. 380) ‘scarcely correspond in two
consecutive words.’
264. ‘_Corporate bodies have no soul._’ ‘They [corporations] cannot
commit treason, nor be outlawed nor excommunicate, for they have
no souls.’ Sir Edward Coke, _Case of Sutton’s Hospital_, 10 Rep.
32.
‘_Self-love and social._’ Pope, _Essay on Man_, IV. 396.
‘_A pestilent fellow._’ Cf. ‘What a pestilent slave is this same!’
_Romeo and Juliet_, Act IV. Scene 5.
265. _The town-hall reels_, _etc._ Mr. W. C. Hazlitt says that ‘it
appears from a rough memorandum on the back of one of the leaves
of the MS. that the Mayor’s Feast at Basingstoke was in the
writer’s mind when he wrote this,’
‘_The very stones prate._’ _Macbeth_, Act II. Scene 1.
‘_Dressed in a little brief authority._’ _Measure for Measure_,
Act II. Scene 2.
266. ‘_Compunctious visitings_,’ _etc._ _Macbeth_, Act I. Scene 5.
‘_Motley’s his proper wear._’ ‘Motley’s the only wear.’ _As You
Like It_, Act II. Scene 7.
‘_Diseases are turned_,’ _etc._ _Henry IV._, Part II. Act I. Scene
2.
Note. ‘_Sacred pity_,’ _etc._ _As You Like It_, Act II. Scene 7.
267. ‘_Disembowel himself_,’ _etc._ Burke, _Reflections on the
Revolution in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, II. 101).
268. _Hitherto_, _etc._ _Job_, xxxviii. 11.
‘_In spite of_,’ _etc._ ‘And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s
spite.’ Pope, _Essay on Man_, I. 293.
270. _The Barrys_, _etc._ James Barry (1741–1806) quarrelled with his
brother Academicians and was expelled in 1799; Benjamin Robert
Haydon (1786–1846), to whom Hazlitt probably refers as ‘H—,’
also quarrelled with the Royal Academy, and was never made a
member; Charles Cotton (1728–1798), coach-painter to George
III., was by him nominated one of the foundation members of the
Academy.
270. ‘_Wipes out_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act I. Scene 5.
‘_The Raphael grace_,’ _etc._ Cf. _Tristram Shandy_, III. 12.
‘_Must live within_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act I. Scene 5.
‘_Dandled_,’ _etc._ ‘I was not, like his Grace of Bedford,
swaddled, and rocked, and dandled into a legislator.’ Burke, _A
Letter to a Noble Lord_ (_Works_, Bohn, V. 124).
_Sir Thomas Lawrence_, _etc._ Lawrence had been commissioned to
paint the members of the Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle, and had
afterwards visited Rome. He returned to England in 1820.
_Mr. Dawe._ George Dawe (1781–1829) who went to Russia in 1819
and painted for the Emperor a great number of portraits.
Lamb contributed an account of him to _The Englishman’s
Magazine_ (Sept. 1831) entitled _Recollections of A Late
Royal Academician_.
_Mr. Canning somewhere_, _etc._ See his Speeches on the occasion
of his reelection at Liverpool, March, 1820.
271. ‘_All honourable men._’ _Julius Caesar_, Act III. Scene 2.
ESSAY XXVIII. WHETHER ACTORS OUGHT TO SIT IN THE BOXES
‘_By his so potent art._’ _The Tempest_, Act V. Scene 1.
272. ‘_Pile millions_,’ _etc._
‘Be buried quick with her, and so will I:
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
Millions of acres on us,’ etc.
_Hamlet_, Act V. Scene 1.
273. _Mr. Matthews, in his ‘At Home.’_ Probably Hazlitt refers to ‘The
Trip to Paris,’ by James Smith and John Poole, Mathews’s second
_At Home_, produced in 1819.
‘_O’er the stage_,’ _etc._
‘Dread o’er the scene, the ghost of Hamlet stalks;
Othello rages; poor Monimia mourns;
And Belvidera pours her soul in love.’
Thomson, _The Seasons_, Winter, 646–8.
‘_No; let him pass_,’ _etc._
‘Vex not his ghost: O, let him pass! he hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer.’
_King Lear_, Act V. Scene 3.
_Abel Drugger._ In Ben Jonson’s _The Alchemist_, one of Garrick’s
great parts.
274. ‘_Sir, do you think_,’ _etc._ ‘Dost thou think Alexander looked o’
this fashion i’ the earth?’ _Hamlet_, Act V. Scene 1.
‘_With a bare bodkin._’ _Ib._, Act III. Scene 1.
‘_Steal most guilty-like away._’ _Othello_, Act III. Scene 3.
_Omne ignotum_, _etc._ Tacitus, _Agricola_, XXX.
‘_A voice potential._’ _Othello_, Act I. Scene 2.
‘_Shuffled off_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 1.
_Aut Caesar_, _etc._ The motto of Caesar Borgia.
‘_That players may jet through._’ Adapted from _Cymbeline_, Act
III. Scene 3.
_The top-tragedian._ John Philip Kemble.
274. _Him with the falcon eye._ Coriolanus, perhaps, one of Kemble’s
most famous parts.
275. ‘_The graves yawn_,’ _etc._ A composite quotation from _Much Ado
About Nothing_ (Act V. Scene 3) and _Macbeth_ (Act III. Scene
4).
_The Copper Captain_, _etc._ In Fletcher’s _Rule a Wife and have a
Wife_; Bobadil, in Ben Jonson’s _Every Man in His Humour_;
Ranger, in Hoadly’s _The Suspicious Husband_; Young Rapid, in
Morton’s _A Cure for the Heart-Ache_; Lord Foppington, in
Vanbrugh’s _The Relapse_.
‘_My brain would have been_,’ _etc._ ‘I declare, quoth my uncle
Toby, mine are more like a smoke-jack!’ _Tristram Shandy_, vol.
III. chap. 18.
‘_Then sweet_,’ _etc._ ‘Then sweet, now sad to mention.’ _Paradise
Lost_, II. 820.
_Mrs. Garrick._ Mrs. Garrick died in 1822 at the age of 98.
276. ‘_A little more than kin_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act I. Scene 2.
277. ‘_Instinct with fire._’ _Paradise Lost_, II. 937.
278. _Sterne’s stop-watch._ _Tristram Shandy_, vol. III. chap. 12.
‘_Cried out upon_,’ _etc._ Cf. ‘An eyrie of children, little
eyases, that cry out on the top of question.’ _Hamlet_, Act II.
Scene 2.
Note. See _The Spectator_, No. 235. Mr. Smirke, afterwards Sir
Robert Smirke (1781–1867) rebuilt Covent Garden Theatre (1809),
and Benjamin Dean Wyatt (1775–1850?) rebuilt Drury Lane Theatre
(1811). Hazlitt implies that at both theatres the galleries
commanded an imperfect view of the stage. At Covent Garden this
was one of the grievances which led to the O. P. riots of 1809.
279. _Grimaldi._ Joseph Grimaldi (1779–1837).
ESSAY XXIX. ON THE DISADVANTAGES OF INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY
280. _Petrarch complains_, _etc._ In the sonnet lamenting the death of
Laura, beginning ‘Gli occhi di ch’ io parlai si caldamente.’
‘_To be honest_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act II. Scene 2.
‘_How now_,’ _etc._ _Henry VI._ Part II., Act IV. Scene 2.
‘_Stand all astonied_,’ _etc._ _The Faerie Queene_, Book vii.
Canto VI. Stanza 28.
281. _C—._ Coleridge.
283. _Otium cum dignitate._ Cicero, _Pro Publio Sextio_, XLV.
‘_I am nothing_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act II. Scene 1.
284. _In the —._ _The Quarterly Review._
‘_This is the unkindest_,’ _etc._ ‘This was the most unkindest cut
of all!’ _Julius Cæsar_, Act III. Scene 2.
_Prince Maurice’s Parrot_, _etc._ These two papers were published
in _Political Essays_, vol. III. pp. 101 and 305.
285. _A motto from Butler._
‘Yet he that is but able to express
No sense at all in several languages,
Will pass for learneder than he that’s known, etc.
Butler, _Satire upon the Abuse of Human Learning_, ll. 65–7.
_L—._ Lamb.
_L. H._ Leigh Hunt.
_A person of this over-weening turn._ Probably Leigh Hunt, his
friend S— being Shelley.
285. _Count Stendhal._ Marie-Henri Beyle (1783–1842).
‘_Germane to the matter_.’ _Hamlet_, Act V. Scene 2.
_My answers to Vetus._ Contributed to _The Morning Chronicle_ in
1813 and republished in _Political Essays_. See vol. III.
286. _Digito monstrari._ Horace, _Odes_, IV. iii. 22.
_Mr. Powell’s court._ In St. Martin’s Street. Cf. _ante_, p. 88.
_Mr. Knight’s performance of Filch._ For reference to Edward
Knight (‘Little Knight’) and for Hazlitt’s remark on Simmons’s
Filch, see the volume containing dramatic criticisms. The
article in _The Examiner_ appeared on Nov. 6, 1815.
_One Cavanagh._ See _ante_, pp. 86–89.
_A character of him._ See _Political Essays_, vol. III. p, 325.
287. ‘_Lively, audible_,’ _etc._ ‘It’s spritely, waking, audible, and
full of vent.’ _Coriolanus_, Act IV. Scene 5.
_The conversation between Angelica and Foresight._ _Love for
Love_, Act II. Scene 3.
‘_So shalt thou find me_,’ _etc._ _Sardanapalus_, Act IV. Scene 1.
288. _Scholars should be sworn at Highgate._ See Brand’s _Popular
Antiquities_, II. 195. Part of the oath taken by the person
sworn was ‘never to kiss the maid when he could kiss the
mistress.’
‘_Not pierceable_,’ _etc._ _The Faerie Queene_, Book I. Canto I.
Stanza 7.
‘_To succeed at the gaming-table_,’ _etc._ The sentiment is
Peachum’s. See _The Beggar’s Opera_, Act I. Scene 1.
‘_To have a good face_,’ _etc._ ‘To be a well-favoured man is the
gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature.’ _Much
Ado About Nothing_, Act III. Scene 3.
ESSAY XXX. ON PATRONAGE AND PUFFING
289. ‘_A gentle husher_,’ _etc._ _The Faerie Queene_, Book I. Canto iv.
Stanza 13.
‘_Puff direct._’ Sheridan, _The Critic_, Act I. Scene 2.
290. _Groundling._ ‘To split the ears of the groundlings.’ _Hamlet_,
Act III. Scene 2.
291. _Parolles and his drum._ _All’s Well that Ends Well._
_Another friend of mine._ Lamb.
_Even Lord Byron_, _etc._ Byron was said to have written puffs of
Warren’s Blacking. See W. F. Deacon’s volume of parodies,
_Warreniana_ (1824).
‘_Deathless date._’ Cf. ‘Short is my date, but deathless my
renown.’ Pope, Homer’s _Iliad_, IX. 535.
292. _When I formerly_, _etc._ For the matters referred to in this and
the two succeeding paragraphs, cf. the volume containing
Hazlitt’s dramatic criticisms.
_Poor Perry._ James Perry (1756–1821), editor and proprietor of
_The Morning Chronicle_. See Hazlitt’s _A View of the English
Stage_ for his article on Miss Stephens as Polly.
_Mrs. Billington._ Elizabeth Billington (1768–1818), the great
singer.
‘_Life knows no return of spring._’ The song (Act II. Scene 1)
begins ‘Let us drink and sport to-day.’
‘_My final hopes_,’ _etc._ A characteristic reference to the fall
of Napoleon.
293. ‘_Hope, thou nurse_,’ _etc._ Bickerstaffe’s _Love in a Village_,
Act I. Scene 1.
‘_Bought golden opinions_,’ _etc._ _Macbeth_, Act I. Scene 7.
‘_On such a day_,’ _etc._ _Merchant of Venice_, Act I. Scene 3.
Note. _Mr. M—._ William Mudford. See _ante_, p. 111.
Note. ‘_Liked you lean_,’ _etc._ Cf. ‘Yond Cassius has a lean and
hungry look.’ _Julius Caesar_, Act I. Scene 2.
294. _Master Betty’s acting._ See _The Spirit of the Age_, vol. IV. p.
233.
‘_Some gay creature_,’ _etc._ _Comus_, 299.
‘_And in my mind_,’ _etc._ Home’s _Douglas_, Act IV. Scene 1.
_Enfield’s Speaker._ William Enfield’s _The Speaker, or
Miscellaneous Pieces selected from the best English Writers_,
originally published in 1774 and frequently reprinted.
_Mrs. Radcliffe’s Romance of the Forest._ See _English Comic
Writers_, vol. VIII. p. 125.
_Coleridge returned from Italy._ In August, 1806.
295. _Katterfelto._
‘And Katterfelto, with his hair on end
At his own wonders, wondering for his bread.’
Cowper, _The Task_, IV. 86–87.
296. ‘_It only is when_,’ _etc._ ‘’Twas only that, when he was off, he
was acting.’ Goldsmith, _Retaliation_, 102.
‘_Do me your offices._’ _Henry IV._, Part II., Act II. Scene 1.
_Mr. N—._ Northcote.
297. ‘_The first row of the rubric._’ See _ante_, note to p. 205 note.
298. ‘_All the world’s a stage_,’ _etc._ _As You Like It_, Act II.
Scene 7.
‘_Some followers of mine own._’ _Richard III._, Act III. Scene 7.
299. ‘_Holloa, you pampered jades_,’ _etc._ Marlowe’s _Tamburlaine the
Great_, Part II., Act IV. Scene 4.
‘_Cry him up_,’ _etc._ Cf. _ante_, p. 278.
_Rari nantes_, _etc._ _Aeneid_, I. 118.
300. ‘_Aiery of children_,’ _etc._ Cf. _ante_, note to p. 278.
301. _Dr. Johnson was asked_, _etc._ Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_ (ed.
G. B. Hill), IV. 116.
302. _Beechey._ Sir William Beechey (1753–1839), portrait painter to
Queen Charlotte.
Note. _Sharp._ Michael William Sharp (d. 1840) a pupil of Beechey.
ESSAY XXXI. ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER
303. _‘Speech,’ said a celebrated wit_, _etc._ Hazlitt probably refers
to Voltaire (_Le Chapon et la Poularde_), but the saying is
older.
_Lord Chesterfield advises us_, _etc._ See note to vol. I. p. 42.
Note. _Othello_, Act III. Scene 4.
304. _A rude half-effaced outline_, _etc._ The portrait of Donne by W.
Marshall, taken from a painting in 1591, when Donne was 18.
_The Duke of W—._ The Duke of Wellington.
305. _C—’s face._ Coleridge.
‘_Create a soul_,’ _etc._ _Comus_, 562.
_A little, demure_, _etc._ Sarah Walker, the heroine of _Liber
Amoris_.
306. _I know a person._ Hazlitt himself.
‘_Compliments extern._’ _Othello_, Act I. Scene 1.
307. ‘_If the French have a fault_,’ _etc._ _A Sentimental Journey_,
Character, Versailles.
309. _Service is no inheritance._ ‘Service is no heritage.’ _All’s Well
that Ends Well_, Act I. Scene 3.
‘_Subtle as the fox_,’ _etc._ _Cymbeline_, Act III. Scene 3.
310. ‘_Bitter bad judges._’ _The Beggar’s Opera_, Act I. Scene 1.
_I never knew but one clever man_, _etc._ Leigh Hunt?
310. ‘_The way of woman’s will_, _etc._’ Cf. _Samson Agonistes_,
1011–13.
311. _Oh! thou_, _etc._ Sarah Walker.
312. _The son, for instance_, _etc._ Hazlitt is clearly speaking of his
own experience.
‘_Rembrandts_,’ _etc._ ‘Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff.’
Goldsmith, _Retaliation_, 145.
‘_Infinite agitation_,’ _etc._ Bacon, _Advancement of Learning_,
Book I., IV. 5.
314. ‘_In the trade of war._’ _Othello_, I., 2.
‘_So as with a difference._’ Cf. _ante_, note to p. 202.
‘_Pure defecated evil._’ Burke, _Letter to a Noble Lord_ (_Works_,
Bohn, V. 141).
‘_Whatever is, is right._’ Pope, _Essay on Man_, I., 294.
‘_Amen stuck in his throat._’ _Macbeth_, Act II. Scene 2.
‘_No malice in the case_,’ _etc._ _The Beggar’s Opera_, Act I.
Scene 1.
_Remorse._ See _Osorio_, of which _Remorse_ was a recast. _Works_,
(ed. J. D. Campbell), p. 496.
315. ‘_I count myself_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 1.
316. ‘_Who knew all qualities_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act III. Scene 3.
ESSAY XXXII. ON THE PICTURESQUE AND IDEAL
318. _Mr. Northcote’s study of Gadshill._ Cf. _Conversations of
Northcote_, _ante_, p. 403.
‘_Of no mark_,’ _etc._ _Henry IV._, Part I. Act III. Scene 2.
319. _The Marriage of Cana._ The Marriage at Cana in the Louvre.
_Madame M—._ Mr. W. C. Hazlitt fills this blank with the name of
Mérimée. When Hazlitt went to Paris in 1802 he took with him a
letter of introduction from Holcroft to Mérimée the painter,
whose son Prosper was born in the following year, 1803.
320. ‘_See how the moonlight_,’ _etc._ _Merchant of Venice_, Act V.
Scene 1.
321. ‘_My bounty_,’ _etc._ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act II. Scene 2.
ESSAY XXXIII. ON THE FEAR OF DEATH
‘_And our little life_,’ _etc._ _The Tempest_, Act IV. Scene 1.
322. _When Bickerstaff wrote his essays._ In _The Tatler_, 1709–11.
_The firing at Bunker’s hill._ June 17, 1775.
‘_The gorge rises at._’ _Hamlet_, Act V. Scene 1.
323. ‘_The wars_,’ _etc._ _The Faerie Queene_, Book II. Canto IX.
Stanza 56.
‘_The present eye_,’ _etc._ ‘The present eye praises the present
object.’ _Troilus and Cressida_, Act III. Scene 3.
324. ‘_Makes calamity_,’ _etc._ HAMLET, Act III. Scene 1.
‘_Oh! thou strong heart_,’ _etc._ Webster’s _The White Devil; or
Vittoria Corombona_, Act V. Scene 1.
‘_Content man’s natural desire._’ ‘To be, contents his natural
desire.’ Pope, _Essay on Man_, I. 109.
‘_On this bank_,’ _etc._ _Macbeth_, Act I. Scene 1.
‘_This sensible_,’ _etc._ _Measure for Measure_, Act III. Scene 1.
‘_Turns to withered_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, XI. 540.
Note. Young’s _Night Thoughts_, I. 424.
325. ‘_The sear, the yellow leaf._’ _Macbeth_, Act V. Scene 3.
_Gone into the wastes of time._ ‘That thou among the wastes of
time must go.’ Shakespeare, Sonnet No. XII.
326. _Zanetto_, _etc._ Rousseau’s _Confessions_, Part II. liv. 7.
326. _I have never seen death but once._ See MEMOIRS OF WILLIAM
HAZLITT, I. 170.
_At my breast._ A paragraph in the MS. of this essay is here
omitted:
‘I did not see my father after he was dead, but I saw death shake
him by the palsied hand, and stare him in the face. He made as
good an end as Falstaff; though different as became him. After
repeating the name of his R(edeemer) often, he took my mother’s
hand, and, looking up, put it in my sister’s, and so expired.
There was something graceful and gracious in his nature, which
showed itself in his last act.’
_Chantry’s monument_, _etc._ Chantrey’s ‘Sleeping Children’ in
Lichfield Cathedral.
327. ‘_Still from the tomb_,’ _etc._ Gray’s _Elegy_, 91–2.
328. ‘_A little rule_,’ _etc._ Dyer’s _Grongar Hill_, 89–92.
‘_A great man’s memory_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 2.
329. ‘_At a pin’s fee._’ _Ib._, Act I. Scene 4.
‘_Sea-sick, weary bark_,’ _etc._ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act V. Scene
3.
‘_To lose it afterwards_,’ _etc._
‘To lose it, may be, at last in a lewd quarrel
For some new friend.’
Otway, _Venice Preserved_, Act IV. Scene 2.
MR. NORTHCOTE’S CONVERSATIONS
James Northcote (1746–1831), was the son of Samuel Northcote, a
Plymouth watchmaker. He was brought to the notice of Sir Joshua
Reynolds by the Mudges of Plymouth (see note to p. 366). Sir
Joshua befriended him and he sat as one of the figures in
Ugolino. After study in London and abroad he began to acquire
reputation as a portrait-painter. He exhibited at the Royal
Academy first in 1781, and of that body he was elected an
Associate in 1786, and an Academician on Feb. 13, 1787. He
painted many historical and sacred subjects, but his reputation
will rest upon his portraits, many of which may be seen in the
National Portrait Gallery. He wrote the _Memoirs of Sir Joshua
Reynolds_ (1813–15) wherein several of the anecdotes which occur
in the conversations first appear, and was helped in two other
pieces of literary work by Hazlitt, viz., _The Life of Titian,
with Anecdotes of the Distinguished Persons of his Time_ (1830),
and _One Hundred Fables, Original and Selected_ (1828), the
wood-cuts to which, by William Harvey, from Northcote’s designs,
are of value with respect to the art of English wood-engraving.
A Second Series was issued in 1833, after his death. He spoke
Devonshire all his life and never married. See _Memorials of an
Eighteenth Century Painter_ (James Northcote): by Stephen Gwynn,
1898; _Conversations of James Northcote, R.A., with James Ward
on Art and Artists_: edited by Ernest Fletcher, 1901; P. G.
Patmore’s _My Friends and Acquaintances_; Hazlitt’s essay ‘On
the Old Age of Artists’ in _The Plain Speaker_; Ruskin’s
_Præterita_; and _The Examiner_, May 4th, 1833.
The circumstances under which the ‘Conversations’ were reported
and printed will be found set forth in the ‘Memoirs of William
Hazlitt,’ vol. II. pp. 198–213. After six issues had appeared in
_The New Monthly Magazine_ a Mr. Rosdew protested on behalf of
the Mudges against some remarks that appeared therein. The
passages, which are given below in the Notes for the first time
since they appeared in the _Magazine_ (they were omitted when
Hazlitt collected the papers for a volume), may explain this
protest. The publication of further issues seems to have been
stopped by the Editor, Thomas Campbell. Four Conversations (see
note to p. 394), were contributed to _Richardson’s London Weekly
Review_, and their existence there does not seem to have been
noted until the present edition. Their publication was
transferred to _The Atlas_ (see note to p. 420), and finished
therein. Unfortunately, the British Museum file of _The Atlas_
is defective, and it has not so far been possible to check every
‘Conversation’ with its first appearance in magazine form. Where
possible, however, this has been done, and a few passages are
given below which were not reprinted by Hazlitt.
333. Conversations I.-VI. first appeared in _The New Monthly Magazine
and Literary Journal_. They begin in vol. 17, 1826, Part II.
‘Original Papers,’ under the title of ‘Boswell Redivivus’ and
may be found as follows:—
No. I. August vol. 17 No. 68
„ II. September „ „ „ 69
„ III. October „ „ „ 70
„ IV. November „ „ „ 71
„ V. February „ 19 „ 74 (1827, ‘Original
Papers,’ Part I.)
„ VI. March „ „ „ 75
The motto (‘The precepts here,’ etc.) appears at the head of No.
I.
The following explanatory footnote was not reproduced when the
_Conversations_ were published in volume form:—
‘I differ from my great original and predecessor (James Boswell,
Esq., of Auchinleck), in this, that whereas he is supposed to
have invented nothing, I have feigned whatever I pleased. I have
forgotten, mistaken, mis-stated, altered, transposed a number of
things. All that can be relied upon for certain is a striking
anecdote or a sterling remark or two in each page. These belong
as a matter of right to my principal speaker: the rest I have
made for him by interpolating or paraphrasing what he said. My
object was to catch the tone and manner, rather than to repeat
the exact expressions, or even opinions; just as it is possible
to recognise the voice of an acquaintance without distinguishing
the particular words he uses. Sometimes I have allowed an acute
or a severe remark to stand without the accompanying softenings
or explanations, for the sake of effect; and at other times
added whole passages without any foundation, to fill up space.
For instance, there is a dissertation on pp. 75–6, the
particulars and the Tory turn of which are entirely my own. My
friend Mr. N— is a determined Whig. I have, however, generally
taken him as my lay-figure or model, and worked upon it, _selon
mon gré_, by fancying how he would express himself on any
occasion, and making up a conversation according to this
preconception in my mind. I have also introduced little
incidental details that never happened; thus, by lying, giving a
greater air of truth to the scene—an art understood by most
historians! In a word, Mr. N— is only answerable for the wit,
sense, and spirit, there may be in these papers: I take all the
dullness, impertinence, and malice upon myself. He has furnished
the text—I fear I have often spoiled it by the commentary. Or
(to give it a more favourable turn) I have expanded him into a
book, as another friend[98] has continued the history of the
Honeycombs down to the present period. My Dialogues are done
much upon the same principle as the _Family Journal_: I shall be
more than satisfied if they are thought to possess but half the
spirit and verisimilitude,’
‘J. B. R.’
333. _Cosway._ Richard Cosway, R.A. (1740–1821), painter in
water-colour, oil and miniature.
_Miss Reynolds._ Frances Reynolds (1729–1807), youngest sister of
Sir Joshua. She also was an artist and wrote an ‘Essay on Taste’
of which Dr. Johnson thought highly.
_Burying Lord Byron in Poet’s Corner._ The application of Lord
Byron’s relatives that he should be buried in Westminster Abbey
was refused, and he lies in the church of Hucknall-Torkard, near
Newstead. The Abbey would not receive even his statue by
Thorwaldsen, which is now in the Library of Trinity College,
Cambridge.
334. _Hoppner._ John Hoppner, R.A. (1758–1810). He and Sir Thomas
Lawrence took the places of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Romney as
fashionable portrait painters.
_G—._ William Godwin (1756–1836). ‘His daughter’ would probably be
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who returned to England after
Shelley’s death. As the initial occurs constantly throughout the
_Conversations_ it will save some repetition in the notes if for
G— Godwin is always understood, except where otherwise stated.
_H—._ Leigh Hunt. His _Recollections of Lord Byron and Some of His
Contemporaries_ appeared in 1828, but this Conversation appeared
in the _New Monthly Magazine_ in 1826. In the _Magazine_ the
initial is F— not H—.
_Mr. S—._ Shelley.
_Like the tree in Virgil._ _Aeneid_, III. 37–40.
_Mr. Moore has just written a book._ Moore’s _Life of Byron_ was
published in 1830. This note was added when the _Conversations_
were collected into a volume.
336. _H—._ For Benjamin Robert Haydon, historical painter (1786–1846)
see the volume containing Hazlitt’s art criticism.
_Fuseli._ Heinrich Fuessly, or Henry Fuseli, portrait painter and
art critic (1741–1825).
_W—._ _Wordsworth._ The name is given in full in the _Magazine_.
337. _Armed all in proof._ _Richard III._, Act V. Scene 3.
_Stat nominis umbra._ ‘Stat magni nominis umbra.’ Lucan,
_Pharsalia_, I. 135.
_Tom Paine._ The opposition to Paine’s _Rights of Man_ (1791–1792)
was so great that it involved those circulating it in
imprisonment. Paine’s escape to Paris saved him.
338. _Dr. Watts ... the encomiums passed on him by Dr. Johnson._ See
Dr. Johnson’s Letter to Mr. Edward Dilly, July 7, 1777: ‘his
name has long been held by me in veneration.... I wish to
distinguish Watts, a man who never wrote but for a good
purpose.’
339. _Mr. Northcote ... a portrait of himself._ A portrait of
Northcote, painted by himself in 1821, is in the National
Portrait Gallery. There are two or three others in existence.
340. _West, Barry._ Benjamin West (1738–1820), historical painter, and
James Barry (1741–1806), whom Allan Cunningham described as ‘the
greatest enthusiast in art which this country ever produced.’
341. _Boaden._ (B. in the _Magazine_.) James Boaden (1762–1839),
dramatic critic and author of lives of Kemble and Mrs. Siddons.
341. _Henderson._ John Henderson (1747–1785), the ‘Bath Roscius.’
342. _Master Betty._ William Henry West Betty or the Young Roscius
(1791–1874) who began to act at the age of eleven. Pitt
adjourned the House of Commons to enable the members to see his
impersonation of Hamlet. See Vol. IV. _The Spirit of the Age_,
p. 233 and note. Northcote painted his portrait.
_Humphreys (the artist)._ The remark was probably made by Ozias
Humphry (1742–1810); ‘Master Betty’ acted as a boy eight years
before Humphry’s death, and the conversation is concerned with
Betty’s acting when a boy. See also _Conversations of James
Northcote, R.A., with James Ward_, page 86: ‘Can you tell me,’
said Ward, ‘if Betty the boy-actor—the young Roscius—was as
extraordinary as some people have represented, for I myself
never had an opportunity of seeing him act?’ ‘His gracefulness,’
replied Northcote, ‘was exquisite; I never saw anything like it
before. When Humphry saw him, he cried out, “Oh, ’tis the young
Apollo come down from his pedestal!”’ The only doubt lies in the
fact that Humphry’s eyesight seems to have failed in 1797.
_Mr. Harley._ George Davies Harley (Davies was his real name),
author and actor, who never rose above useful work, and who died
in 1811. He wrote ‘An Authentic Biographical Sketch of the Life,
Education, and Personal Character of William Henry West Betty,
the Celebrated Young Roscius’ (1802).
_Alexander the Great._ The sub-title of Nat. Lee’s tragedy
(1655–1692) _The Rival Queens_ (1677).
_Romney._ George Romney (1734–1802), portrait painter. Lord
Thurlow said that the town was divided into two factions—Romney
and Reynolds.
343. _Opie._ John Opie (1761–1807), portrait and historical painter, of
Cornish birth. He was discovered by Dr. Wolcot (Peter Pindar),
himself a west-countryman.
_Miss C—._ Possibly Miss Cotterell. See note to p. 450.
345. _Gandy._ William Gandy (born second half seventeenth century, d.
1729), portrait painter. He was the son of James Gandy, also a
portrait painter (1619–1689). See _ante_, p. 21 and note.
_Hudson._ Thomas Hudson, portrait painter (1701–1779), the master
of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
_Mengs._ Anton Rafael Mengs, of Bohemian birth (1728–1779),
portrait and fresco painter.
_The Duke of Ormond._ James Butler, second Duke of Ormonde
(1665–1746).
_Stringer._ Daniel Stringer, portrait painter, a student of the
Royal Academy about 1770.
346. _Cignani._ Conte Carlo Cignani, a painter of the Lombard School
(1628–1719).
_Going with Wilkie to Angerstein’s._ Sir David Wilkie (1785–1841).
John Julius Angerstein (1735–1823), who acquired an immense
fortune ‘in the city,’ and made the collection of pictures in
his house in Pall-Mall which developed into the National Gallery
by the purchase of them by the government after his death for
some £60,000.
_Edwards._ Edward Edwards, historical painter (1738–1806).
_Masaccio._ Tommaso Guidi, or Masaccio (= Slovenly Tommy, from his
careless manners) (1401–1428), Florentine painter, noted
especially for his works on the walls of the Carmine church.
Note. ‘_The blacksmith swallowing the tailor’s news._’ _King
John_, Act IV. Scene 2.
347. _Prince Hoare._ Portrait and historical painter and dramatist
(1755–1834), son of William Hoare, R.A. Haydon said of his timid
expression of face, that ‘when he laughed heartily he seemed to
be crying.’
347. _Day._ Alexander Day, miniature painter and picture-dealer
(1772–1841). He brought from Italy several old masters which are
now in the National Gallery.
349. _Lord B— to dine with Dr. Johnson._ In the _Magazine_ the name
is given in full as that of Lord Boringdon. John Parker
(1735–1788), first Baron Boringdon, father of the first Earl
of Morley.
_One of the cages at Exeter-’Change._ See vol. IV. _The Spirit of
the Age_, note to p. 223.
_The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz._ These _Mémoires_ appeared in
1717, and English translations were published soon after. They
throw much light on the time of the Wars of the Fronde, and are
excellent in character-drawing.
350. _F. Reynolds._ Dramatist (1764–1841).
_Matthews, the comedian._ Charles Mathews (1776–1835), actor and,
above all, mimic.
_The Prince leaving Sheridan to die in absolute want._ Although
Sheridan was the ‘official mouthpiece’ of the Prince Regent, he
was allowed to die in extreme poverty and with the bailiffs in
his house.
351. _Do you believe the modern periodicals._ These are specified in
the _Magazine_ as ‘John Bull’ and ‘Blackwood,’ the former the
Tory paper started in 1820 by Theodore Hook. See vol. IV. _The
Spirit of the Age_, note to p. 217.
_H—me._ Probably Joseph Hume of the Pipe Office. See _ante_, note
to p. 195.
352. _Kelly’s ‘Reminiscences.’_ Michael Kelly’s ‘Reminiscences,
including a period of nearly half a Century; with Original
Anecdotes of many Distinguished Personages,’ appeared in 1820. A
second edition was published in 1826. It is a valuable
store-house for the historian of the English theatre.
_Mrs. Crouch._ Anna Maria Crouch (1763–1805), the beautiful
vocalist, whose ‘appearance was that of a meteor, it dazzled,
from excess of brilliancy, every spectator.’
_Love in a Village._ Isaac Bickerstaffe’s operatic farce, with
music by Arne (1762).
353. _Canova._ Antonio Canova, a sculptor and painter after the manner
of the Venetian School (1757–1822).
_Bernini._ Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, sculptor and architect
(1598–1680).
_Mandeville._ Bernard de Mandeville, satirist (1670–1733), author
of ‘The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices as Public Benefits’
(1705–1723), an ironical attack upon Shaftesbury’s theories of
virtue, the fallacy of which, according to Dr. Johnson,
consisted in that Mandeville defined neither vices nor benefits.
He it was who described Addison as ‘a parson in a tye-wig.’
354. _The Ireland controversy ... Dr. Parr._ Dr. Samuel Parr
(1747–1825), clergyman and schoolmaster, and possessed of an
inexplicable reputation for scholarship, was one of the
believers in the Shakespeare forgeries of Samuel William Henry
Ireland (1777–1835). Northcote uses the same phrase about Dr.
Parr in a conversation with James Ward. See his _Conversations
with James Ward_, p. 88.
_Tresham._ Henry Tresham, painter and amateur picture dealer
(1749–1814).
_Caleb Whitefoord_ (1734–1810), wit and diplomatist. See the
epitaph Goldsmith left among his papers for ‘Retaliation.’
357. _Tongues in the trees_, _etc._ _As You Like It_, Act II. Scene 1.
358. _Mr. — the poet._ Probably Tom Moore.
358. _Start back with affright._ After this sentence the following
passage occurs in the _Magazine_:—‘This has often struck me in
West, how happy it was for him that he lived and died in the
belief that he was the greatest painter that had ever appeared
on the face of the earth. Nothing could shake him in this
opinion, nor did he ever lose sight of it. It was always “My
Wolfe, my Wolfe”:—I do assure you literally, you could not be
with him for five minutes at any time, without his alluding to
this subject: whatever else was mentioned, he always brought it
round to that. He thought Wolfe owed all his fame to the
picture: it was he who had immortalized Wolfe, not Wolfe who had
immortalized him.’
_Woollett._ William Woollett (1735–1785), a great engraver. He is
said to have begun his career by a careful study of a Turk’s
Head on a pewter-pot in his father’s public-house; he was also
credited with the habit of firing a cannon from the roof of his
house when he had finished a great plate. On his mean tombstone
in Old St. Pancras churchyard some one wrote:—
‘Here Woollett rests, expecting to be saved;
He graved well, but is not well engraved.’
There is now a memorial to him in Westminster Abbey.
359. _Dance._ Sir Nathaniel Dance Holland, Bart. (1734–1811), portrait
and landscape painter, son of George Dance, builder of the
Mansion House. Since Angelica Kauffmann would not marry him, he
married a rich widow, took the name of Holland, became a
baronet, entered Parliament and gave up art.
_Farington._ Joseph Farington, landscape painter (1747–1821).